The Pain of a Lost Memory

Posted By: LittleReg1 @ 02/12/2008 11:52:45 AM

Comment: The author of and most of the commentators to this article fail to adequately address what the author himself admits as an alleged lack of valid reasons as to why people don't back up their data. To me, it's simple: the lack of reliable, standardized technology. How many times have we seen backups fail with the usual cryptic messages and error codes? There is no mom and pop level software that I'm aware of that will reliably synchronize partitions and/or O/S directories. However, even if there were, there are still two words that would solve it all: HOT BACKUPS. Until and unless we can backup on the fly, we're going to keep losing data.

Posted By: jpfisher2 @ 11/01/2007 9:04:02 PM

Comment: The hard drive on my mac recently died. Fortunately, I have been using ElephantDrive.com. My important files are backed up nightly, automatically, on their secure servers. The interface is intuitive and it works. ElephantDrive allowed me to download all of my important files via my DSL line and I am back in business, data intact.. Data backup is now easy, painless and guilt free..

Posted By: mscowebmaster @ 10/31/2007 2:11:55 PM

Comment: Backing up is great and should be a necessity for all individuals and companies, however many people, even on these posts are living with a false sense of security by simply backing up to an external hard drive, DVDs or CDs. By doing this you are still leaving yourself susceptible to the threat of a disaster at your home or office I.e. a fire or a flood.

To avoid this I recommend using a remote database backup solution called RedBoomerang. It works just like any other backup solution but instead of storing it locally it sends it to a remote company. Which also makes it ideal for travelers. That way you don't need to bother bringing an external HD when you're away on business. Wherever you have internet access your computer backs itself up.

Posted By: Taunya @ 10/30/2007 11:23:12 PM

Comment: oops that's Carbonite.com, not Carbolite.

Posted By: marvwhite @ 10/30/2007 11:00:35 PM

Comment: At the present time I wave all our data backed up on 8 hard drives and several DVDs, my file server has a mirrored raid set up. All my drives backed up using Beyond Compare one a week and once a month I clone both C: drives with X-Clone. We have almost 17000 digital images at this time which losing is not an option (been there done that not a pretty picture).
The people I work with say I am paranoid. I keep advising them to back up. But when they lose there data I get to say I told you. Not funny but true. This is my home systems.

Posted By: marvwhite @ 10/30/2007 10:49:32 PM

Comment: At the present time I have all my files backed up on 8 hard drives these are updated with Beyond Compare once a week and then once a month my C: drive on both machines are cloned with X-Clone. My file server is a raid 1(Mirrored). I have 17K digital image (at this time) and adding more daily. Loosing them is not an option. Most of the people I work with tells me I am parnoid. I keep advising them to back-up. When they crash I get to say I told you so. Not funny but true.

Posted By: c2ttech @ 10/30/2007 9:47:29 PM

Comment: As the owner of a computer sales and support company I often have the displeasure of informing clients that all of the pictures of their child, their tax forms, years of genealogy and other precious memories are lost forever. I have seen businesses lost all of their contacts and accounts receivable files. The list of excuses for not backing up their data can all be boiled down to: I just will not be bothered with backing up! I have had clients break down and cry, curse an even become violent when they realized what they have lost. I have seen it bankrupt businesses. All because 10 minutes a day and as little as 25cents a day are to much trouble.

Posted By: larrythenewsgeek @ 10/30/2007 8:28:05 PM

Comment: I bought OSX lepard which has a seamless backup system. I then bought a 500GB hard drive and plugged it in. Now my iMac computer makes continuous backups of everything.

Posted By: teschchr122 @ 10/30/2007 7:41:11 PM

Comment: We have a back up system that backs the files up very often. However, at some point, some child or another erased pictures that we have of our kids for the last ten years. They didn't want to mention it for fear of getting in trouble. We didn't discover it until about a month later. Those files keep backing up over and over again on the same medium and recording over what was there. The picture files are irretrievably lost.

Posted By: jesserinb @ 10/30/2007 5:33:10 PM

Comment: I think I must have had a lemon of a computer. It is a 2001. My hard drive died in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005- but not for the last two years- i must have been tortured enough! I think I lost at least one hard drive on my former computer. I have always backed up either through floppies, zip drives, CD's and DVD's. Basically, I used whatever is popular. Still, I lost some extremely important documents every time. Somehow one document or folder would always slip throught the cracks. Now, I keep even more things in digital form. I got rid of the three 4-drawer file cabinets or research. i got rid of 150 music CD's and have never printed many recent family and work related photos. But, I also back up to CD's and DVD's and save them in multiple locations (even different towns). Also, I am now on Windows Vista- on a new computer. It backs up any files I change, every morning. As an extremely computer dependent academic and professional, I don't ever want to lose those important things ever again. I will do whatever it takes!

Posted By: jesserinb @ 10/30/2007 5:32:44 PM

Comment: I think I must have had a lemon of a computer. It is a 2001. My hard drive died in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005- but not for the last two years- i must have been tortured enough! I think I lost at least one hard drive on my former computer. I have always backed up either through floppies, zip drives, CD's and DVD's. Basically, I used whatever is popular. Still, I lost some extremely important documents every time. Somehow one document or folder would always slip throught the cracks. Now, I keep even more things in digital form. I got rid of the three 4-drawer file cabinets or research. i got rid of 150 music CD's and have never printed many recent family and work related photos. But, I also back up to CD's and DVD's and save them in multiple locations (even different towns). Also, I am now on Windows Vista- on a new computer. It backs up any files I change, every morning. As an extremely computer dependent academic and professional, I don't ever want to lose those important things ever again. I will do whatever it takes!

Posted By: danmcgov @ 10/30/2007 5:31:46 PM

Comment: External hard drive...plug them in to PC, drag files, that's it. It does not get any easier (and they get cheaper by the week)

Posted By: danmcgov @ 10/30/2007 5:30:14 PM

Comment: External hard drives...plug them in, drag files and that's it. It doesn't get any easier. They are also inexpensive.

Posted By: jpeepis @ 10/30/2007 5:01:19 PM

Comment: Oh the guilt! We were also totally negligent about backing up our data...untill our comuter crashed this summer. We lost all of our music files, personal documents, and emails from long -lost friends. Worst of all, we lost years worth of pictures. School plays, little league ball games, first days of school, vacations, pictures of our beloved White Sox clinching the World Series...all gone. Are we 100% diligent about backing up our data now? No. But we are better. It was a painful lesson to learn!

Posted By: maruichan @ 10/30/2007 4:37:05 PM

Comment: heatherv93,

Try OnTrack Data Recovery. There is likely not any local company in your area as this is generally done by major companies because of what's involved. They sale software for data recovery if your HDD is accessible at all. But that is likely what your local PC shop tried to do to get the data back. What you will probably have to do is send your HDD out for them to attempt to pull the data off the tape itself if it is still intact. They should be able to recover your data if the tape itself has not been damaged. Keep in mind however, it's expensive!

Posted By: heatherv93 @ 10/30/2007 4:25:02 PM

Comment: maruichan - thanks so much for the advice!! I'm in Nashville, TN - do you know of any good ones in my area?

Posted By: maruichan @ 10/30/2007 4:24:50 PM

Comment: heatherv93,

It is possible to recover your data if part of your HDD is still functioning. If the data is that important to you, you can send it out to a company where it may be possible to recover the data using equipment that can read the tape in hard drive's that have failed. Of course, that all depends on the extent of the damage PHYSICALLY inside the drive. If the hard drive mechanism just simply can't read the information and the tape is still intact, they can use the equipment to recover your data.

I keep three BACKUPS. Actually, this is an ongoing topic for me within the past week because I have spent a great amount of my time helping people recover their own data. My fiance's HDD decided to fail and I actually lost two of my own BACKUPS in the process. One was intentional was I needed a place to store his data I was recovering, but the second back up was lost due to the installation disk by Gateway removing my data without my permission...

Either way, it's good to have a geek to go to for these types of things. PC "Professionals" don't give you the whole story and it's a lot like a car getting repaired. There may be a way to fix your car, but without knowing how a car works, you couldn't possible know if the professional is giving you the entire story. Technicians often don't tell their customers that they have this--though expensive--alternative to recover their data.

Keep more than one backup. My third backup was on a laptop, so the information was untouched, but it was out of date by a month or so. My fiance almost lost 60-80G worth of data--most that would've been unrecoverable. Most of the data I would've lost would've been music and artwork/renders that I have done and accumulated since 10 years ago! It is not backed up on a DVD and is going straight to a safe deposit box where it is not at risk for being scratched. I recommend solid state backup for pictures and things like that that can be stored in a place where it won't get scratched. Blue ray burners--when they get much cheaper--can burn 25G a disk. Of course, all of this is useless if the consumer doesn't try to back up their own data.

Posted By: cgiddings @ 10/30/2007 4:21:19 PM

Comment: Whoops, doubled up! Sorry!

Posted By: cgiddings @ 10/30/2007 4:19:45 PM

Comment: I picked up a copy of Apple's new Mac OS X Leopard (www.apple.com) product which gives you "Time Machine" over the weekend. I have to say it's a great product. Time Machine makes it simple, nay, even fun to backup my data. All I do is flip a switch and my data is backed up for me automatically, no ifs ands or buts. A simple click and I can retrieve a document I may have accidentally deleted without thinking first.

Time Machine does require an external hard drive, but that's simpler to achieve than configuring complex backup software.

And as an earlier commenter noted, off-site backups are equally important in case of theft or natural disaster. I use MediaMax (www.mediamax.com) to handle my off-site backups. It's been fast and reliable for me for the past several years.

Posted By: cgiddings @ 10/30/2007 4:19:03 PM

Comment: I picked up a copy of Apple's new Mac OS X Leopard (www.apple.com) product which gives you "Time Machine" over the weekend. I have to say it's a great product. Time Machine makes it simple, nay, even fun to backup my data. All I do is flip a switch and my data is backed up for me automatically, no ifs ands or buts. A simple click and I can retrieve a document I may have accidentally deleted without thinking first.

Time Machine does require an external hard drive, but that's simpler to achieve than configuring complex backup software.

And as an earlier commenter noted, off-site backups are equally important in case of theft or natural disaster. I use MediaMax (www.mediamax.com) to handle my off-site backups. It's been fast and reliable for me for the past several years.

Posted By: maruichan @ 10/30/2007 4:15:25 PM

Comment: heatherv93,

People like you might want to look into some of data recovery companies out there. You may need to send your hard drive itself out, but If certain parts of your HDD are still functioning (such as the tape that is on the hard disk itself), they may be able to recover your data with special equipment. There is little that a technician at a regular PC shop can do to a restore a hard drive if some physical parts have failed... and they often don't suggest this as a remedy to customers. But us geeks know better, so it helps to have that friend who will suggest these things, when someone over the counter won't go out of their way to tell you this.

I was talking about this with a friend previously as she just lost some personal data... I currently keep THREE-yes-THREE back ups of my data, but keep in mind this data is almost exclusively music and personal art work and renders I have done over the period of 10 years. I actually lost two of my backups in one night trying to get my fiance's hard drive to come back to life. He almost lost about 60-80Gs worth of his own personal data... the final backup was on my laptop, which was untouched.

Getting the message, I have now burned all my personal digital works and renders onto DVD disks and I plan to put that in my safe deposit box A.S.A.P. One back up is sometimes not enough! Even for us geeks, it's possible to lose data in extenuating circumstances... that's why it's always good to have one solid state back up (CD, DVD, etc) and if possible, a second hard drive to keep up with what is going on with your data on going so you can keep backing it up when it's not possible to get to a burner. Sony blue ray--when the drives get cheaper--will make this easier because the disks hold 25G on one layer. But it's still the consumer's responsibility to back up their data...

Posted By: cmossol @ 10/30/2007 4:08:51 PM

Comment: Most of us are just plain lazy.
A great solution is RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Drives)
Wiki explains the concept very well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
Hard drives are so cheap now that all important data should be backed up.

Posted By: Andycalifornia2007 @ 10/30/2007 4:08:27 PM

Comment: I'm a tehcnologically literate baby boomer. This means I view ALL electronic data stroage media as unreliable and untrustworthy backup tools. So, I keep electronic documents and digital photos and music on my computer and IPod, but also print the documents and photos, burn the music onto CDs and store copies in fireproof places in fireproof places like safes and bank deposit boxes.. It's a little unwieldly and sometimes a nuisance, but I know I won't be SOL the next time there's an EMP, a motherboard brain-fart or a fire or flood or earthquake.

Posted By: amoss @ 10/30/2007 3:45:54 PM

Comment: Great article!

I've been thinking about this recently and also feel offsite backups are very important. You can loose all of your memories if your home burned like what we saw in California this week or if someone broke in and stole your equipment.

I just signed up for online storage so I can backup my most treasured family pictures to cover those kind of loses.

Posted By: heatherv93 @ 10/30/2007 3:06:30 PM

Comment: sorry about the double post....

Posted By: heatherv93 @ 10/30/2007 3:03:21 PM

Comment: The article's headline (the most appropriate one I have ever seen) says everything; I can attest to this. I had noticed problems with my computer and was planning to save all my documents and photos to CD's over a long weekend. My computer crashed two days before and I lost everything. The worst was losing three years' worth of photos of my children, holidays, and vacations, all things I can never get back. I cried for two solid hours once I realized they were gone, and cried again when a computer repair pro told me they were irretrievable.

The irony of it all is that I preach to my kids to save their documents early and often so they don't lose any of their hard work on papers, projects, etc. Fortunately, I still have a lot of our memories on video, but I have learned a hard, painful lesson about backing up data early and often.

Posted By: heatherv93 @ 10/30/2007 3:03:07 PM

Comment: The article's headline (the most appropriate one I have ever seen) says everything; I can attest to this. I had noticed problems with my computer and was planning to save all my documents and photos to CD's over a long weekend. My computer crashed two days before and I lost everything. The worst was losing three years' worth of photos of my children, holidays, and vacations, all things I can never get back. I cried for two solid hours once I realized they were gone, and cried again when a computer repair pro told me they were irretrievable.

The irony of it all is that I preach to my kids to save their documents early and often so they don't lose any of their hard work on papers, projects, etc. Fortunately, I still have a lot of our memories on video, but I have learned a hard, painful lesson about backing up data early and often.

Posted By: JustAThoughtOrTwo @ 10/30/2007 2:39:25 PM

Comment: I keep everything I need on my iomega 250GB Hi-Speed USB 2.0 external harddrive as a backup. It fits inside a shirt pocket (for size reference, not recommended). I have all my kids pictures (6+ years worth) in digital format and had an incident about 5 years ago where my laptop crashed hard. Fortunately someone was able to retrieve the image files as well as a few other things, but the majority of the harddrive was trashed and while I waited to see if everything was lost, I promised it would never happen again.

So, I have my laptop, and a "carbon copy" in external format...heck, it's only $200 for complete piece of mind.

...And as the pictures are that precious to me, I also have them zipped, locked, and uploaded to my local host (which has redundant servers, so I'm double covered there as well). What can I say, I'm in the IT industry and understand what it means to lose everything you have and have done in a second's notice.

As inexpensive and easy as it is to do, I don't understand why anyone wouldn't.

Posted By: kingwoodbudo @ 10/30/2007 2:22:13 PM

Comment: Funny that I came across the article just as I backed up my pics before I left the house. I couldn't imagine losing all the pictures and video of my daughter from the day she was born until now, three years later. I need to make a better plan of doing it. For the time being, we have a external backup drive that backs up every evening. I also download all the pics my wife uploads from the camera to my desktop, so we have three areas. Any time I made a DVD, I make a backup of that and keep it at the office just in case something terrible would happen at home. Thanks for the article!!

Top Story

Latest News

Discuss